Users of electronic mail (“e-mail”) client application programs are commonly frustrated by the number of steps that must be taken by a user to view the contents of a document that has been attached to an e-mail message. In many cases, a user only wants to see a preview of the attachment. A preview is a read-only rendering of a document that mimics what a user would have seen if the document was opened with an application program associated with the document. However, in the typical case, the user is required to select the attachment and then launch the application program associated with the attachment to view its contents.
When this traditional process for viewing the contents of an e-mail attachment is performed, the user is required to change application contexts between the e-mail client application and the application utilized to view the attachment. When the user has finished viewing the attachment, the user must again switch application contexts by closing the application program and returning to the e-mail client application. Switching application contexts in this manner to view a preview of an e-mail attachment can be both time consuming and frustrating for a user.
Because prior application programs have not provided a mechanism for allowing users to view the contents of an e-mail attachment without switching application contexts, these application programs have also not provided a convenient mechanism to navigate among the attachments to an e-mail message. In particular, these application programs have not provided a user interface mechanism through which a user can easily view the available attachments to an e-mail message and select one of the attachments for previewing.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the various embodiments of the present invention have been made.